Why cloud and Why not emulator
Real devices are good for testing your application under less than optimal network conditions, emulators can’t fully replicate device hardware. This makes it difficult to test against real-world scenarios using an emulator. Issues related to the kernel code, the amount of memory on a device, the Wi-Fi chip, and other device-specific features can’t be replicated on an emulator. It’s not enough to test on emulators alone, Providers Like Google firebase Test labs are providing a variety of real and virtual devices in Free plan, Will have chance to see how Espresso test cases behave with different android mobile manufactures
Cloud provides good traceability of automation failures and Execution of Reports than implementing custom reporters in Local emulators, Running Test cases in Parallel Process are provided in the cloud platform
Freshsales has done cloud execution in most of the available cloud platforms like
Will discuss each platform in detail regards to their execution style, number of devices available in the free plan and the price of the paid plans and ease of use
List of devices provided by Google firebase TestLabs in their free plan
Navigate to https://console.firebase.google.com/ and create a project directory
After creating a project , tap on the Test lab in the navigation panel
Google firebase allows particular Test class or Test method to be executed via gcloud sdk , So we have to install gcloud sdk in the machine
Type in the terminal
curl https://sdk.cloud.google.com | bash
In terminal while installing gcloud sdk with the above command , it would ask to update the $PATH for gcloud command to be used in the terminal , So give “Y”
After installation is complete , Close the terminal and reopen it for the gcloud command to be activated
In the new terminal line , Give the command gcloud init, so it automatically opens a browser tab asking for the google account to get authenticated
Tap Allow in the google SDK account, so that your account will be authenticated and the list of projects present in the firebase accounts are listed in the terminal
You can see the “my-sample-android” project is shown in the cloud project list
If you have more than 10 projects associated to your email id, you can try the below command
gcloud projects list
Where it will list all the projects, Type the number associated to the project to use the Project as default, For example, in the above terminal, we need to set my-sample-android as a default one so we type 3 which is the number associated to the my-sample-android project
The above message shown in the screenshot will be displayed once the project is associated
Now go to the android project directory in the terminal and generate the app apk and test apk using Gradle tasks as below
./gradlew :app:assembleDebug
./gradlew :app:assembleAndroidTest
To check what are Gradle tasks present in the project directory use
./gradlew tasks
The above command varies to project based on the flavors and some other properties mentioned in the below link
https://developer.android.com/studio/build , Now the build will be generated in the folder path likeproject_name/module_name/build/outputs/apk
Now coming to the execution of espresso test cases via gcloud command line as below
gcloud firebase test android run \ --app path/to/app.apk \ --test path/to/tests.apk \ --device model=walleye,version=26 \ --test-targets "package com.my.package.tests1","package com.my.package.tests2"
The device version can be taken from model_id and os version id as mentioned in the glcoud firebase test android mobile list --device model=walleye,version=26
This will trigger a test case in firebase test labs as shown below
Go to your firebase project and tap on the test labs, you can find the test has been triggered and running as shown in the screenshots and the results will be shown in the terminal and in the firebase test labs too, Firebase also displays the performance of the app during the test execution which added advantage here
Signup a free account in browserstack and go https://app-automate.browserstack.com/ and there you can find the quick start guide in the left side panel as shown in the screenshot
Then give the below command in the terminal to upload the apk to be tested into browserstack
curl -u "senthilvel4:sk3TeQpMDUWN8QzSZzeY" -X POST "https://api-cloud.browserstack.com/app-automate/upload" -F "file=@/Users/senthilvelp/freshsales-android/app/build/outputs/apk/snapshotStaging/debug/Freshsales-snapshotStagingDebug-130.apk"
This command will return an app URL , paste it in a note pad, for example, consider this command returns the token as below
{"app_url":"bs://a37164545c2dc618d364aee6e445ab69f79525e9"}
Now upload the Android test app via below command in the terminal
curl -u "senthilvel4:sk3TeQpMDUWN8QzSZzeY" -X POST "https://api-cloud.browserstack.com/app-automate/espresso/test-suite" -F "file=@/Users/senthilvelp/freshsales-android/app/build/outputs/apk/androidTest/snapshotStaging/debug/app-snapshot-staging-debug-androidTest.apk"
This command will return an app URL, paste it in a note pad, for example, consider this command returns the token as below
{"test_url":"bs://1bd03f5cf1b2eb2dd492724da9bb12f15e01d8e3"}
Now Run the below command in terminal to trigger a test run in the browserstack
curl -X POST "https://api-cloud.browserstack.com/app-automate/espresso/build" -d \ "{\"devices\": [\"Google Pixel 3a-9.0\"], \"app\": \"bs://a37164545c2dc618d364aee6e445ab69f79525e9\", \"deviceLogs\" : true,\"class\" : [\"com.freshdesk.freshsales.UITests.Tests.AppointmentTests\"], \"testSuite\": \"bs://1bd03f5cf1b2eb2dd492724da9bb12f15e01d8e3\"}" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -u "senthilvel4:sk3TeQpMDUWN8QzSZzeY"
Note:
Now you can see test triggered in the browserstack account with test class shown below, you can run the test based on test suite, package, class, annotation, for more reference please refer the below link
https://www.browserstack.com/app-automate/espresso/get-started
Note:
For user name and Access key, you can find the same in the left panel shown in the above screenshot
Signup a free account in sauce labs in the below URL
https://saucelabs.com/sign-up and after successful sign up navigate to https://app.saucelabs.com/ , there you can see Access real device automation as shown in the below screenshot, tap on the Access real device automation and it will navigate to https://app.testobject.com/
In that URL please create a new app using tapping on the New App Button as shown in the below
Tap on the Android IOS App in the next page , this will ask the App to be tested to get uploaded , please upload the app here
Then it will ask for the device orientation, give the default orientation and tap save
After this , the project will be created and for executing espresso test tap on the below icon shown in the screenshot
For running espresso test we need to download the runner.java file provided by the sauce labs from the below link
https://wiki.saucelabs.com/display/DOCS/Using+Espresso+for+Real+Device+Testing
After downloading the jar, copy and paste in your home directory, to know the sauce labs secret key , Tap on the Get started button in the above screenshot and this will take you to below screen
Now got home directory where the runner.jave is located in the terminal and type the below command
java -jar runner.jar espresso --test /Users/senthilvelp/freshsales-android/app/build/outputs/apk/androidTest/snapshotStaging/debug/app-snapshot-staging-debug-androidTest.apk --app /Users/senthilvelp/freshsales-android/app/build/outputs/apk/snapshotStaging/debug/Freshsales-snapshotStagingDebug-133.apk --apikey 0E4703278D544FD1AD7B79873252F3C1 --datacenter US --e class com.freshdesk.freshsales.UITests.Tests.AppointmentTests#createAppointmentForLead
This will trigger a test in sauce labs
Then refresh the page you can see the test suite got triggered or go to the project dashboard and click automated testing → espresso / robotium and you can find the test suite as below
Sauce labs supports test execution based on class, package, and annotation too with help of the -e command
